Crave Cook Click Bay2Breakers 2017 in Chaniya Choli

San Francisco’s Alaska Airlines Bay to Breakers is an annual 12K footrace operated by Wasserman Events and has run continuously for over 100 years as a staple to the City by the Bay. Crave Cook Click Facebook Group hosted an event for the members to walk this 12K in traditional Indian attire of Chaniya Choli. Last year we walked this fun race wearing Nauwari and it was a big hit.

With a starting point near the San Francisco Bay, a few blocks from The Embarcadero, the 12K race runs west through the city and finishes at the Great Highway where breakers crash onto the Pacific Coast’s Ocean Beach. A quintessential San Francisco experience since 1912, the race is interwoven into the fabric of the city and is a true reflection and celebration of life between the breakers and the Bay.

Bay to Breakers is well known for many participants wearing costumes, and a few engaging in varying degrees of public nudity. From 1986 to 2010, it was officially the world’s largest footrace with 110,000 participants, until it was surpassed by City2Surf event in Sydney. Attendance in 2016 was reported at roughly 80,000

I ran my 1st Bay2Breakers 2 years back and my costume was Superwoman with a gang of 5 other gals. When I was running the course last year, I saw 2 non-indian runners wore saree as a costume. It was then I decided that henceforth every year I will wear a costume which will represent India. Here is the link to all pics

And thus last year I ran Bay2Breakers wearing a Nauwari along with 15 other ladies from my group Crave Cook Click on facebook. We chose Nauwari to represent state of Maharashtra. Here is the link to last year’s pics. This year’s costume was Chaniya choli to represent the state of Gujarat

About a month back I created a Crave Cook Click event for running the race in Chaniya Choli and got great response.

Gagra choli or Chaniya choli, which is also known as Lehenga choli, is the traditional clothing of women from the Indian subcontinent; notable in Indian states of Rajasthan, Gujarat,Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu. As well in Hindi speaking regions of Nepal. In Punjab it was traditionally worn with the kurti and salwar.It is a combination outfit of a Lehenga, tight Choli and a Dupatta

Almost 80 percent of our running group was Non-Maharashtrians but still they were equally excited to run the race in nauwari

We planned this event for more than a month..from finalising the count of ppl, arranging Chaniya cholis, getting accessories, registrations, collecting bibs, finding out race day transportation etc. Special thanks to Nidhi and Neha Agarwal for helping me out with all the planning 🙂

All ladies got up at 4 am on the race day, got ready in Chaniya cholis and accessories and were present at the Mountain View Caltrain station at sharp 6am.

That was just craziness…hehe. We made heads turn on the course and saw many Instagram posts floating around with our group pics.

I am soo glad that all the efforts which we put in were so appreciated and applauded. Many people on the course came and told us that we looked so awesome and unique. They spoke to us about India and how colorful the country is. They wanted to click selfies with us.

When we were approaching the finish line, we held each others hands and crossed it together. For me it was the best moment of the race:) We are thousands of miles away from India but still it is closest in our heart and we totally rock representing it.

Here is the video of our funny boomerangs 🙂

Crave Cook Click organizes these meetups on regular basis which provides a platform to share your passion for food, fashion, profession, travel, fitness, photography, celebrations and social networking. If you are interested to join these meetups in future, join the below mentioned groups per your interests.